In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer. [dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]
Interpretation
This quote highlights the mutual respect and acknowledgment between two prominent figures in science fiction and science writing.
Arthur C. Clarke's dedication to Isaac Asimov serves as a testament to the camaraderie and admiration that exists among great writers within the same genre. By referring to himself as the 'second-best' science writer and Asimov as the 'second-best' science fiction writer, Clarke humorously downplays their achievements while simultaneously honoring their contributions to literature and science. This quote reflects the humility and respect that often characterize the relationships between peers in intellectual fields.
In practice
In a literary discussion, one might cite this quote to illustrate how great writers often recognize and celebrate each other's talents.
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
I am still bowled over by this great young adult novel by David Levithan called 'Every Day,' which is about a character with no gender or body who wakes up every day in the body of a different person. It's a really impressive execution of a really great premise.
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed
Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on - developing and changing like our own world.
Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.
Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.
I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they'd once belonged to the sea.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.